Hey Paul. Were you guys asleep when it came to Jeff Baker? Please tell me it was because Colorado wouldnt trade him to a division rival. He is the kind of cheap upside player the Padres need as the offense in the middle infield is anemic. He has real power if he can stay healthy and he is what, 27? The Cubs didnt give up much for him. Just tell me he was on your radar.Thanks

Like I said in the post on my blog last night, San Diego turns into LA south for the Dodgers series.

There are going to be way too many drunk and belligerent LA fans for my taste.

Manny was caught. Busted.

If baseball was serious about stemming steroid and other PED's they would take a stance like Olympic sports.

The athletes would be tested all year, not once in spring training and once during the year with a possibility of a 3rd test. That just means that after that third test they can use steroids all they want until a month or so before they go to spring training and have to be tested the first time.

When they do test positive the penalty needs to be much stiffer.

1st offense - 2 years suspension.2nd offense - Lifetime ban.

And Manny didn't serve a 50 day suspension, he served about a 36 day suspension and then got a tune up in the minors like he had been injured, not suspended. That rule is a complete joke.

It is very simple and it is a legal principle. You cannot protect that list based on privacy or the CBA if it is about something illegal. Steroids and PED's were illegal in the US at that time, so makes whomever has the list an accomplice.

i am glad that he got the boos from the padre fans. that being said one positive could be an honest mistake so i think 50 games is fine. Two should be harsher. I dont want to go too hard on Manny, because we weren't this hard on Merriman

I never hope a player to be booed, but I really hope that he's not cheered. Ideally, I would like to see the entire crowd silent. Once he's back in LA, he's gonna get a huge standing ovation, but until then, it won't be good. I just don't believe that a player that cheated should get cheers

Look, Manny did his time, as laid out by the rules. Time to move on. End of story.

Now back to Micheal Jackson

The Padres organization still celebrates Cammy, and he didn't use drugs at all, he abused them. Any chemical with 100 feet of his nose, and I have yet to see a Padres blog recommend Cammy's MVP trophy be given back.

I have never seen a team score 6 runs without the benefit of a a hit. The dsl padres got 2 hits in 5 innings but scoreless vs their starter, and then, they scores 6 earned runs without the benefit of a hit. AMAZING!

What do you think about signing Sano? Hypothetical, if you compare him to the other amateurs that got drafted, where would be go in 2009's draft?

I used fangraphs.com to drive my analysis, so thanks to them. Unfortunately, the stats I used (game logs) did not include Sac Flies or Sac Bunts on a game-by-game basis, so I backfilled them from minorleaguesplits.com (thanks again) as a month end number, to adjust the appropriate metrics.

My criteria were based on a simple premise. I'm sure it's not new, but I think it makes the most sense to determine an offensive player's value by asking the question: How many runs did he create? Obviously, there could be disagreement on what this actually means (e.g. whether sac bunts should be factored in somehow), but again, I wanted to keep it simple.

The formula I used was: R+RBI-HR (so as not to double count the single run created by a HR). Then I analyzed this both on a per-game and per-PA basis. I also excluded players with 90 or fewer PA's (a bit arbitrary, but I had to draw the line somewhere).

The stats proved that my instincts do get it right sometimes: At first glance, Zawadzki led the pack with an impressive 0.333 Runs Created per Plate Appearance, as well as 1.41 Runs Created per Game. One out of every three times he went to bat for his team, he created a run!

Carroll, Darnell, Payne, and Tekotte all were competitive with Zawadzki's ratios:

The deciding factors for me were that, not only did Zawadzki have the best ratios, but he also played at least two more games than anyone else, and in an environment that Paul recently pointed out was one of the less hitter-friendly environments in our minor league system. He led all hitters with 38 runs created, 4 more than anyone else.

There were some inconsistencies between my PA numbers and yours, Paul, which seem attributable to my inclusion of HBP, SF, and SH. I'd be curious to hear if you intentionally excluded them, and if so, why.

After I realized the discrepancies between our PA numbers, I realized that a couple of guys actually made the arbitrary cut line I established (91+ PA's): Robertson and Weems. So I went back and analyzed those two in the name of fairness.

Weems had an impressive .323 RCPA, good enough to follow Zawadzki's numbers.

But the best came last. Robertson just barely made the cut at 91 PA's, but had an excellent .352 RCPA using my PA calc, and the highest using Paul's PA number as well, at .372.

Despite Robertson's efficacy, I still feel that Zawadzki's overall production (he maintained his rates over 27 games, vs. only 20 games where Robertson had 2 or more PA's) warrants the POM award. Robertson definitely gets my honorable mention nod, however.

Paulat some point can you comment on Yoan Alcantara and other international signees? great info and insight into the organization. i still have hope and am looking forward to the future and all those kids in that horribly ranked minor league system...

I would like to think that our fans would be less likely to embrace a cheater. At the same time I have sort of put Merriman's misdeeds in the past. I think I would have a harder time forgiving and forgetting if a Padre was juicing because the Pads have always been more important to me. I am still really conflicted with my feelings regarding Cammy, I guess I judge him less because of the kind of demons that he battled.

Can you speak to a bit to the lack of Padres activity in the International players window after the $5 M committment made last year and the new Dominican facility? Has the market become overpriced? Are the prospects not a good this year? Does the new ownership not value Latin America as much? Budget tightening given the tough sign draft?